From "What If You Could Do It All Over?/The uncanny allure of our unlived lives" by Joshua Rothman (in The New Yorker).
This is a subject I raised a few days back, on the blog here. Do you have a "road not taken" point in your past — a particular moment? Do you question your fixation on that moment or do you find present-day meaning in the way that is preserved in your mind? It's not that there was a fork in the road, but that your life in its entirety is a fork, and you still have that fork.
ADDED: I have a post from 2007 called "The Road Not Taken." It's about a day I spent as a docent in a Frank Lloyd Wright gatehouse that has the inscription over the fireplace: "Taken the road less traveled by/That has made all the difference." (The precise Frost line is "I took the one less traveled by/And that has made all the difference.")
I showed many people through the room, and I always had to say that it was the original fireplace, but the line was not there originally, as, indeed, it could not have been — unless, as I said once, "Frank Lloyd Wright was unusually prescient" — because it had yet to be written in 1901 when the gatehouse was built. So I had some interesting conversations with visitors about the line.
Would Frank Lloyd Wright have approved? He took the road less traveled, but the road that consists of loving that poem is very well traveled. All these people enamored of a line about nonconformity -- it's ironic. Most of the people I talked to wanted to take the road less traveled and reject the poem....Now, when I see that line — "I took the one less traveled by/And that has made all the difference" — I think of the documentary "Grey Gardens." Little Edie, truly a nonconformist, treasures the old line. Part of what is so poignant about Little Edie is that she feels so deeply about some terribly shallow things, like astrology, scarves, and the VMI fight song. And so, that poem...
There's some discussion in the comments, I see, about what the poem really means. I could have taken that path, but I chose, back then, to write about the irony of "All these people enamored of a line about nonconformity," and that has made all the difference.
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131 comments:
Many New Yorkers must be fantasizing about their unlived lives.
Annabel Langbein is living my life. I want it back!
The east coast is emptying out in Colorado. It's a freaking nightmare. We are already East California.
Variations on I Should've Forked Her When I Had The Chance.
I am Laslo.
Some looking back and considering 'what ifs' is human nature.
But, look at the happiest people around you. Do you want what they have? Do want to have 'that' joy in your heart?
Then stay in the moment. Live the now. Don't go through the motions of today, and dream about tomorrow. don't Wallow in the past, and totally miss the miracle happening right now.
If you don't do a regular gratitude list, you are willfully ignoring one of the best mental health resets available.
For this kind of thinking, I live the movie “Sliding Doors”
I accepted myself, my lifetime of choices, my life a long time ago and just move forward.
I believe people weed themselves out with their own choices over their lifetime.
My coach told the story of visiting a Crenshaw LA gym around 4 decades back. Some guy off the streets was "lighting up Byron Scott during the afternoon". Then when it was done, my coach saw Byron Scott get into his Mercedes and the guy off the streets just wandered the neighborhood. Byron Scott and the street dude both had awesome BB talents, but I speculate Byron Scott made better lifetime choices.
The biggest reason why I "self identify" conservative is that I believe we are fundamentally where we are by the lifetime of choices we have made.
Choose well today, my Althouse friends.
This unled life may be most easily imagined for people who emigrate: they can even check back in on their unled life this time of year when they go home for the holidays and see the folks who didn't leave, or they could anyway if travel were still a thing.
We may still have that fork, but the tines, they are a-changing.
Sitting outside at sunrise in Albuquerque NM, pondering why I went to college and what a waste it had been. WTF, I thought, I'm gonna go back and enroll in business school. Drove straight through the night to Iowa City, a 20 hour trip. Got an appointment with the Dean who told me, "You're MBA material." Never had any idea. Didn't know what they studied in MBA school. Went from dope-smoking longhair to accountant in 2 years. Now I finally had enough money for all the dope I wanted, and discovered I didn't even like it anymore.
Frost meant the opposite. He's mocking the fantasy.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
If I could go back and do it again...
I'd have taken that 1SG's offer to join the platoon on patrol.
I'd have stopped after the fourth glass of wine
I would not have gone to grad school in California, but would have moved to Texas instead.
Frost is not the wimp that he's made out to be in Eng Lit.
One that I was reminded of yesterday--I looked into buying bitcoin back when you could have a million for about $700. I couldn't figure out how it was money, how it could have any real value, so I passed. Yesterday, that million bitcoin that I didn't buy was worth over 20 billion dollars. Obviously I would have sold most of it long ago, but realistically, I'd be worth 9 or 10 figures right now.
One day I literally flipped a coin to decide whether I would move to New Orleans to become a drunken writer or go back to college. The coin gods said go back to college. So I got a degree, married a woman I met there, and now have a comfortable but conventional, fairly boring life.
There are others.
I accepted myself, my lifetime of choices, my life a long time ago and just move forward.
I believe people weed themselves out with their own choices over their lifetime.
My coach told the story of visiting a Crenshaw LA gym around 4 decades back. Some guy off the streets was "lighting up Byron Scott during the afternoon". Then when it was done, my coach saw Byron Scott get into his Mercedes and the guy off the streets just wandered the neighborhood. Byron Scott and the street dude both had awesome BB talents, but I speculate Byron Scott made better lifetime choices.
The biggest reason why I "self identify" conservative is that I believe we are fundamentally where we are by the lifetime of choices we have made.
Choose well today, my Althouse friends.
I can look back on my choices with some bit of regret, but at the same time I also have faith that there is a higher plan in all this. When I got out of the Army, I regretted it, but getting out when I did meant I wasn't struggling to find a job like many of my buddies who were RIF'd a year later. Leaving my job in Colorado for grad school in CA was difficult, but I got out right before the contract started to die and everyone bailed. And if I'd stayed in CA, I'd be on lockdown right now, living in an overpriced small apartment.
I truly believe that the show "Shameless" is one of the most conservative shows on television. The reason is that everything that happens to the characters is clearly the result of their own good or bad choices. And when they accept that and choose to make better choices, their lives improve.
“ As Sartre says, we are who we are.” I thought is was Popeye.
One that I was reminded of yesterday--I looked into buying bitcoin back when you could have a million for about $700. I couldn't figure out how it was money, how it could have any real value, so I passed. Yesterday, that million bitcoin that I didn't buy was worth over 20 billion dollars. Obviously I would have sold most of it long ago, but realistically, I'd be worth 9 or 10 figures right now.
Had a fellow officer at school back in 2010 who was talking up Bitcoin. I thought about buying some as well, and passed.
But for every "coulda been" there are a thousand "there but for the grace of God..." We just generally choose to ignore them.
Some of the responses here got me thinking--once in a lifetime opportunities come up every 5 years or so. If you miss one, don't waste time feeling bad about it. Take that energy and use it to make sure you're ready for the next one.
In the early 90s when I was in my mid 20s, I worked full time in a software company and part-time as a radio disk jockey on a rock station. I was offered a full-time gig at the radio station, evenings, our second-most-listened-to daypart after morning drive. It would have meant less money (radio, like crime, does not pay) but the job would have been far more exciting.
I stuck with software, and in time I had to let part-time radio go. For a long time I missed being on the air, and wondered what my life would have been like had I taken the other path at that fork.
I know now: radio has gone through incredible consolidation, and a culling of talent. The jobs just aren't there. I was never going to be one of the true greats of radio and would probably have been cut somewhere along the way, unable to get another on-air job in a shrinking radio job market. I've seen it happen to most of my old radio friends.
Meanwhile, tech is booming. I've had no shortage of lucrative opportunity, and it's been a satisfying career.
Yet sometimes I wish I could still pick up a regular weekend airshift somewhere.
Is it a whimsical exercise in imagination, or a pathetic person living in a fantasy he prefers to the road taken? What's the difference?
Some of the responses here got me thinking--once in a lifetime opportunities come up every 5 years or so. If you miss one, don't waste time feeling bad about it. Take that energy and use it to make sure you're ready for the next one.
Yup. "He got lucky" really means, "he was prepared and had the guts to take a risk when a random opportunity appeared."
Mr Wibble said...But for every "coulda been" there are a thousand "there but for the grace of God..." We just generally choose to ignore them.
Yep, given the kind of youth I led, I could well be dead.
And when they accept that and choose to make better choices, their lives improve.
Acceptance is key. That's why the wallowing in what 'ifs' is so self defeating. Accept you are exactly where you are at this moment. Then do the next right thing. Like shutting the laptop and and being early for my first appointment.
Exactly RH. That's what many men are doing today as women participate more and more in man's working world real men who understand fundamentally that life is not fair and keep focused on the present and the future gravitate to fields where women won't venture EG The road less traveled.
"If I had to do it all over, I'd do it all over you."
I'm going to get together with all my alternate versions for a big party in the park and we will tell each other stories.
Yes.
I left a job about 35 years ago where I was very happy. I was subsequently miserable for the next half-decade or so, professionally and personally. I regretted that decision even more when I discovered that you couldn't go home again (I thought then), no matter how much you may want to do so.
The truth was, in retrospect, that I was on the wrong path for me even though I loved my life at that time. I was not in the right place. In retirement, I found a place, in that place, for me. Patience is underrated and possibly the most difficult thing in the world to practice.
My reward for finding a new path was the magnificent woman to whom I have been married all these years since, and the opportunity to make a significantly better living that I would have otherwise. It wasn't a priority, but it's nice to have now.
The older I get, the more I am convinced that our illusion of control over our lives is just that - an illusion. We may control some small bits, but otherwise we're just a pinball whacking off the bumpers of life.
Acceptance I suppose it's like satisfaction EG the losers conceit. I'm still pissed at some of the missed opportunities but I don't dwell on them but I don't accept them either I use them to help guide me through the next series of forks.
The rough road might not be the right road or the safe road or the most remunerative road but at the end of the day it is the most fun satisfying adventurous in spite of being difficult and painful. But that's just my pagan primitive hunter gatherer attitude.
The poem is frequently misunderstood: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/09/11/the-most-misread-poem-in-america/# It has some sad backstory. As to meaning,we should look at the text. What a concept. The paths are actually equally traveled, and Frost is saying there is no difference, but in retrospect will will laud our own decisions as having made all the difference. It is a poem about post hoc reasoning, of rationalisation.
We are very big on Frost here. He was my grandfather's freshman English teacher at Pinkerton Academy in 1910. Gramps wasn't impressed, thought he didn't like students and only took the job for the money to keep his mother's farm afloat. To be fair, who likes teaching 9th-graders, really? He apparently liked teaching college students in Vermont much better. I recommend, for the season, his poem "Christmas Trees (A Christmas Circular Letter.)" https://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/2011/12/christmas-poetry.html We bought our own tree about four miles from there this year.
To be fair, who likes teaching 9th-graders, really?
Honestly, the only way to bear up under the depredations of ninth grade boys is to have plenty of twelfth grade boys available to force them into submission. That's a major reason we've morphed from junior highs to middle schools, but no one else will tell you that.
"The best laid schemes o' mice and men gang aft agley"
-Bob Burns, not Frost, also supposedly a poet of the English language as Scots people speak it. What the hell is agley?
I prefer Sir Terry Pratchett's Trousers of Time, where our choices take us down one leg or the other in each choice made in our lives. This leads of course to the saying, "The leopard cannot change his shorts." How, I don't know. But it does.
Well, sometimes I think that my high school boyfriend was my one true love, and that I chose poorly. But I've learned that he and his wife have ten children, so maybe I dodged a bullet!
Adding to the comments of rhhardin and Assistant Village Idiot above, here is a well written review of Frost's The Road Not Taken that concludes that this poem's message is very often mistaken:
You’re Probably Misreading Robert Frost’s Most Famous Poem
The older I get, the more I am convinced that our illusion of control over our lives is just that - an illusion.
This.
I'm still pissed at some of the missed opportunities
Remove the money from that equation and tell us exactly what you missed.
"a-gley" is an archaic verb formation of gley, such as "I'm a-fixing to go." Gley itself is no longer used, not even in Scots, but it probably comes from Old Norse meaning "to squint." It means to go awry, to go wrong.
If I could do it again, I'd never read The New Yorker.
If I could do it again, I'd never read The New Yorker.
"I read it for the cartoons."
Whenever I am tempted to imagine my unled lives as a fork, I also imagine gods who designed my fate and foretold it in advance. Problem solved.
You’re Probably Misreading Robert Frost’s Most Famous Poem
I'm probably not reading it.
If we had just run away together when we both felt it, we’d have had twenty more years together. But I’m grateful for the ways I was blessed in the gap and I’m grateful for every day we do have together now.
Do you have a "road not taken" point in your past — a particular moment? Do you question your fixation on that moment or do you find present-day meaning in the way that is preserved in your mind?
Yes. If I had, one afternoon after work when I was 20 yrs old, living in San Francisco, decided to NOT go to the Abby Tavern and have a drink with friends, my life might now be totally different.
Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing is debatable because there have been so many turns after that moment where life had an opportunity to significantly change. But..I believe that moment to be the beginning of the diverging of the path.
I am more than satisfied with how my life is now and with the chain of circumstances that brought me to meet and marry my 2nd husband...27 years ago.
I think: "What if?" What if I had not gone that afternoon. Would things still have turned out the same. If not...what about my children, grandchildren. Would they not exist or be other people. What would their lives be like? If not... I might never have met my now dear husband and my life would be.... what?
You can drive yourself crazy thinking about those things. So. It is better to face the future than dwell in the past.
We may still have that fork, but the tines, they are a-changing.
Nicely done, Lucien
I confess I found this post's topic sounded like so much intellectual masturbation to me.
But I just realized I am taking a fork right now. We were not looking, but during the last few years, I had often browsed Zillow and went to some open houses, just to get a taste of alternatives. But not this year. Then one night three months ago, in an area I never looked at, I saw a house on Zillow that I liked. I don't know how I came to see it; I must have clicked something different. This one jumped out at me, and I showed it to my wife; she liked it too.
I contacted the realtor, half idle curiosity. We went to see it but there was almost immediately a pending offer on it.
Offer fell through. We made one. We got it. If all goes according to plan, we'll be out of our sanctuary city for the new year. God willing, we are going to a very different kind of place.
Shit! So this is why nobody takes this road!
So many forks! Broken engagement, decision to stop after 2 children, and choices I wasn't even aware I was making.
My life has been far more interesting and challenging the way it unfolded than had it followed a map of my own design.
My life is a series of multiple forks, regularly coming into view, and always calling me down one path, as I find myself well down a different path.
Yet it's all my life. And, as they say, it's the journey that makes it what it is. And I would not have changed a thing.
It would have meant less money (radio, like crime, does not pay) but the job would have been far more exciting.
I gave up radio after 20+ years back in 2013 to sell insurance and do financial planning, which has proved far more lucrative.
But when I tell people what I do now, nobody ever says, "You sell insurance? Wow, cool! For what company...?!"
chuck said...I'm going to get together with all my alternate versions for a big party in the park and we will tell each other stories.
Not to get all quantum physical...but what IF there area alternate yous who took those alternate pasts. Like Schrödinger's cat (sort of). Have you ever had those clear recurring dreams of being another "you" living an alternate life? So real. So clear. So disturbingly emotional?
Maybe those dreams are you getting in touch with you on another alternate plane. The one where you DID finish college and became an archaeologist. The one where you dropped out and became part of an artists' colony. Where you married that guy and moved to England. Maybe those alternates are dreaming of you too.
Or..maybe it was just too much cherry pie after dinner.
Anyway...fun to think about.
Ann:
You're killing me.
I'll focus on the one big positive: graduating from Creighton Prep and Creighton University as a great number of positives flowed those two decisions which weren't automatic at all. In fact, I transferred to Creighton from another college.
By the way, and completely off topic.
"We may imagine specific unlived lives for ourselves, as artists, or teachers, or tech bros; I have a lawyer friend whose alternate self owns a bar in Red Hook."
In good times, that is, pre-covid times, restaurants typically had a survival rate after 3 years of about 3 in 10 making it. A large reason is that many doctors and lawyers think it would be fun to own a restaurant and enter a business which they no nothing about. What's fun is watching lawyers and doctors learn about the ins and outs of the actual operation of a restaurant, the costs, the low margins, the employees who all think they're partners, and the city and county people coming in with their hands out who also think they're partners. What's fun is when you see the look in the eyes of the lawyers that they know they've made a terrible mistake.
Only thing I would change? Should have learned French when our travel adventures started 35 years ago. Oh, and I’d have started saving and investing sooner. Otherwise letter perfect, right woman, right job, great kids.
My view combines the wisdom of Yogi Berra and Bob Dylan: When you come to a fork in the road, take it, and don't look back.
Summarized, not to choose is to choose.
Documentary Now did a slightly silly but as always clever homage to the doc. Some "Sandy Passage" moments:
https://vimeo.com/137192826
One of my favorite Broadway soundtracks (admittedly a small universe) is "If/Then." Listen sometime.
This poster is my favorite on the subject of the path not taken.Mary Engelbreit No Longer an Option
tcrosse said...
"If I had to do it all over, I'd do it all over you."
Nothing like a Bob Dylan callback on this fine Thursday am
Best when sung by Dave Van Ronk backed by the Red Onion Jazz Band
John Henry
John Greenleaf Whittier — 'Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.'
Jean Shepherd used to say that he felt he was living the life of Riley and that he hoped Riley was just as happy living Shepherd's.
Here's one for Meadehouse.
What if Meade didn't ask Ann out on a date? What if he asked and Ann refused?
A much poorer life for both of them and the blogosphere. Risks do sometimes pay off.
In “The Road Not Taken” the narrator begins by traveling both but when they diverge he must choose one or the other or he will split in two (“And be one traveler”). So he chooses then imagines himself years later (“I shall be telling this with a sigh, Somewhere ages and ages hence”) wondering, sighing about what might have been. And in that imagining he does indeed split: “Two roads diverged in a wood and I — I took the one less traveled by”). Note the “I — I”. His two selves, like the two roads, can never resolve these two paths.
George Jones weighs in:
I've had choices
Since the day that I was born
There were voices
That told me right from wrong
If I had listened
No, I wouldn't be here today
Living and dying
With the choices I made
I was headed into my junior year in college as a liberal arts major when I got sick and had to miss a semester. When I returned I had figured out that I needed to have an employable major. Most of the guys I knew were either business/accounting or engineering majors. So I decided on accounting because I didn’t want to start completely over. Now as a nearing retirement consultant I am engaged in all sorts of challenging and interesting projects.
To bring this full circle our little area is Lieper’s Fork TN where our motto is “Why spoon when you can fork.”
Like most people I have regrets, but sitting here today I wouldn't change a thing from my past.
My favorite quote: "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.".
"Many New Yorkers must be fantasizing about their unlived lives."
Why "New Yorkers" more than anyone else? If anything, a big city like New York (or Chicago, San Francisco, etc.) offers its residents opportunities to live many lives not practical or possible in many other areas.
How many forked roads must a man walk down before you let him just eat his waffle? And besides, don’t all roads lead to the same place — Rome, Georgia?
"I discovered that you couldn't go home again (I thought then), no matter how much you may want to do so."
Ten years ago, I was offered an opportunity to go to work for a company that was looking to expand. It would mean giving up my job of 20 years and a house that I loved in a place I had come to call home in order to move halfway across the country for the second time in my life.
It was a very stressful choice, as I was getting to the point where retirement was on the horizon. The potential disruption in my life was not exactly what I had in mind but it seemed to me it would be my last shot at getting in on the ground floor of anything like this, so I made the leap.
Seven years later, the whole thing crashed and burned. And I went back home. Same city, same job, same house, same PO box. Where would I be if I had never taken that chance 10 years ago? Maybe right where I am today. You never know.
Ollie showed me the fork in the road.
You can take to the left or go straight to the right,
Use your days and save your nights,
Be careful where you step, and watch wha-cha eat,
Sleep with the light on and you got it beat.
When You Awake you will remember ev'rything, You will be
hangin' on a string from your... When you believe, You will relieve the only soul
That you were born with to grow old and never know...
One day they blew him down in a clam bar in New York
He could see it comin’ through the door as he lifted up his fork
But then again, too few to mention
A Bronx Tale - The saddest thing in life is wasted talent, and the choices that you make will shape your life forever. But you can ask anybody from my neighborhood, and they'll just tell you this is just another Bronx tale.
Yeah 1969 I wandered off into music instead of back to school to do something serious with my life. At first I felt lucky to be making good money and getting away from LA.
Later I looked back and felt I'd joined the circus.
So many forks!
E tuttavia le funzioni d'onda collassano.
Mr. Wibble,
Sometimes "he got lucky" just means "she was ovulating".
Meatloaf wrote about a life changing fork in the road in Paradise By The Dashboard Light.
"The poem is frequently misunderstood:"
Who's to say Frost was right?
Hasn't everyone had thoughts of "unlived lives" or put another way taken yet another of many "forks in the road" during our lifetime?
It could be made into a party game among friends....quite revealing.
Who's to say Frost was right?
Jeffrey Toobin
Bob Boyd said...
Who's to say Frost was right?
Jeffrey Toobin
Take it easy on Toobin. He was just beating off to the march of a different drummer.
"I took the one less thoroughly cooked/And that has made all the difference." - from The Bat Not Eaten by Anonymous
Fox News says, "Toobin is holding on to his post"
@AA
Were you a decent docent?
"I took the one less traveled by/And that has made all the difference"
It doesn't say if the difference was for good or ill.
Me? More redheads. And buying Amazon at $20.
So anyway, "So many forks!" brought to mind the "many worlds" QM interpretation, which Schrödinger proposed as way to avoid those unpleasant wave functions collapsing onto his cat-box, and Galileo said "And yet the wave functions collapse" in a different one of those many non-existent worlds.
---Why "New Yorkers" more than anyone else? [Robert Cook]
Robert, nothing too complicated -- the article was published in The New Yorker. The author is identified as the "ideas editor" of The New Yorker. Coincidentally -- ? -- nowhere else in America seems to have been more severely afflicted by the coronavirus and the manmade effects that have accompanied it to limit and restrict existing lives.
So, do large cities offer their residents opportunities to live many lives not practical or possible in other areas, as you wrote? That's a great question. Tell me what you think those are.
I can say this much. I've done a tour of duty in Manhattan when young, and I currently live in another major city which I used to love. But as the years have gone on, the things I have loved about it have been degraded, by PC and other trends of our times, and the governance has been almost uniformly bad. In recent years, that "bad" has reached awful, with the sanctuary element, a Soros DA, and unceasing financial profligacy.
Our neighbors are 90%-plus Democrats who love to put out those "Hate has no home here" signs, by which they are wittingly or unwittingly telling us they hate Trump voters like us. Their "tolerance" is as intolerant and narrow-minded as anything seen during the supposedly conformist 1950s. Much worse, IMO. It's a bad place now.
Lastly, is the coronavirus telling us something about the dense urban model? I'm not sure about that one. But when we came to an unexpected fork in the road, we just made our choice, as I wrote in a second comment.
Bob Boyd - He must be well hung.
If anything, a big city like New York (or Chicago, San Francisco, etc.) offers its residents opportunities to live many lives not practical or possible in many other areas.
Especially gunshot wounds. I know them well.
There should be a place where people can go to learn about life and try to figure out how to make good choices.
So when the time comes to make such a monumental decision about which path to take, they'll be prepared.
Like a college or something.
Fork U.
"Were you a decent docent?"
That's a question I answer in my post titled "Was I a decent docent?"
If you have an interpretation of the poem, just say what yours is. Why do you want to say other people interpret it incorrectly? I don't understand why you want to take that fork in the road. It seems snooty and makes me want to disagree with you and defend the absent people you are attacking.
@AA
Sorry...didn't read your docent post but will now.
I love that alliteration.
My wife is mortified that I ask that question to actual docents at hoity-toity museums.
Me: So you're a docent?
Them: Yes, can I help you?
Me: If you're decent I'm sure you can.
She hates it : )
I look back at the most prominent fork in my life and shudder that I could have gone another way!
Dave Begley said...
What if Meade didn't ask Ann out on a date? What if he asked and Ann refused?
My Dinner With Ann A.
"Do you have a "road not taken" point in your past — a particular moment?"
A few big ones.
Just as well I did it this way, though.
It could be a lot worse.
Yes, the worst illusion is the illusion of control.
I ponder less my own choices--I can give you a few paragraphs later if you behave--than the circumstances that led to them. Had my father not died young in 1962 the family probably would have followed the pattern of most our neighbors-- upper mobility and moves ever eastward, separation and divorce, etc.
I.e. the menu of life-choices for my mother, brothers, and I changed somewhat from that point.
Narr
I chose better than the rest, though
There is also a concept in literature, well, in some literature, and to be honest in Pratchett (yes, he of the Time's Trousers and leopards not able to change shorts), that if we do choose a path or make a decision or take an action that is contrary to Fate, against the defined narrative of the world, or outside the normal so large as to transgress reality, that over time history will alter to heal the rift you created. You will end up where you should have, no matter what you did. Save a princess from an asassin when she should have perished, and a week later reality will catch up and that rescue will never have happened.
This is a great idea to keep in mind when your friends invite you to a camping trip when you don't really want to go out. It is a horrible idea to use in deciding to jump off the 40 foot cliff into the water of unknown depth at those friends' urging. Use at your own risk.
Political Junkie said...
Bob Boyd - He must be well hung.
Like an old Bodark fence post
You could hang a pipe rail gate from
to steal a line from James McMurtry
100
In my senior year in high school I applied to Harvard. This was mostly my mother's idea. I filled out the lengthy application, sent it in, and got called for an interview. I thought I did pretty well at the interview, and I got called in for a second interview. Driving my crappy old car to the interview, the clutch went out and I had to turn around and nurse it back home. I missed the interview entirely, but in spite of that I was named first alternate from Orange County. If either of the two who had been accepted had decided not to attend, I would have been accepted. But here's the deal-- I didn't really want to go. I was seventeen, had lots of friends and a pretty girlfriend (we broke up a couple of months later), and I really didn't want to be 3000 miles away. I don't really regret the outcome, but I wonder how spectacularly different my life might have been if my clutch hadn't burned up. I probably wouldn't have gone to Alaska, would never have met my wife. I most likely would have wound up a liberal government functionary or some such worthless personage. So if you're thinking about the road not taken, be sure to get your clutch checked before you go.
The problem with my imaginary life is that I'm richer and more charismatic than I am in real life.
A wise man I know once said you don't always get what you want but you almost always get what you chose.
I spent 28 years doing hard work and sometimes wonder if I wouldn't have been better off with a soft office job. In reality I know that would not have suited me well. I fear for the next 15 though. This morning my body told me this is a ridiculous thing to be doing.
Althouse: I don't understand why you want to take that fork in the road.
Sometimes we don't even know that there was a "fork in the road" until we are on that other path. Then....it is probably/maybe (or maybe not) too late to go back and take the other path.
We might not have made a conscious decision. Perhaps the deviation from one "path" to the other didn't seem important at the time or wasn't obvious.
Life just happens. Serendipity
and to be honest in Pratchett
Ah, but remember Vimes (et al) got a partial redo in Nightwatch, and Moist Lipwig got a second go at life in Going Postal
It wasn’t a fork in the road Frost came to. It was two roads that began to diverge.
READ THE WORDS, PEOPLE! 🤓
f you have an interpretation of the poem, just say what yours is. Why do you want to say other people interpret it incorrectly? I don't understand why you want to take that fork in the road. It seems snooty and makes me want to disagree with you and defend the absent people you are attacking.
Good vs bad reading. Everything has to fit. They're clues, like a crossword puzzle.
Holidays would be more interesting if Frost had done greeting cards too.
"Frost fills a much-needed gap"
I was seventeen, had lots of friends and a pretty girlfriend (we broke up a couple of months later), and I really didn't want to be 3000 miles away.
I was the opposite. I had a nice girlfriend but we lived in Chicago. I went to southern California, she went to Purdue. She married a guy I knew and they moved to California. We used to meet to play bridge.
Best decision I ever made was to leave Chicago. I was disappointed that I did not get to go to CalTech, where I had been accepted, but my scholarship did not come through. I have often wondered how different my life would have been if I had gone to CalTech.
It wasn’t a fork in the road Frost came to. It was two roads that began to diverge.
READ THE WORDS, PEOPLE! 🤓
Semantics.
First of all, you can only walk on one road (one path) at a time.
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
He was walking down the road and it diverged into two roads going in two different directions. Since he was "one traveler" and couldn't split himself into two versions of himself...as much as he would like to travel both roads.... he had to choose which direction to take. Either that or sit at the divergence and starve to death 😏
Someone mentioned Amazon.
One of my regrets is letting myself be talked out of Buying Berkshire Hathaway at $300
Corrently $330,000
John Henry
Do most people see their alternate lives as desirable? I don't. When I consider the (unlikely) possibility of other selves existing in the alternate timelines of different choices, I feel sad for them and hope they don't exist.
"Why do you want to say other people interpret it incorrectly?"
For the same reason some bloggers chide their readers for misunderstanding their perfectly clear posts. Read more carefully, they say.
@DustBuunnyQueen “ First of all, you can only walk on one road (one path) at a time.”
Au contraire. One foot on one road, the other on the other. It works until they part. And Frost is talking about a splitting of the self in the end when e hiccups on I—I.
So maybe half the signs of traffic--wheel marks in the dirt, say--are people coming back from the road less traveled on account of why it's less traveled.
You might take the road less traveled and find it's blocked by an avalanche, a really keen avalanche. And you're a geologist. Or maybe you're trying a shortcut to pick up a family member at the depot.
"all the difference" has any number of meanings. Good, bad. Boring. Regrets. Grateful. And does anybody have any idea what the road less traveled would be if its characteristics were changed by your traveling on it?
"Everything was great until YOU showed up."
Or we could all just be like Sinatra and say 'Fuck it, I did it my way.'
Btw, 'My Way' lyrics by Paul 'Havin' my baby' Anka.
Speaking of Anka, and reminiscent of Tom Cruise's recent meltdown:
Anka rips into his band (it's classic).
As for interpreting correctly or incorrectly: I don't subscribe to the idea that it is all up for grabs, and no one's can be considered incorrect. That may be true of some artistic works done more recently, where the artist had ambiguity in mind, but the belief that the power lies with the receiver of the work is a very new one, which I don't think has held up well.
The text says what it says, one just has to look closely, and not be sucked in by interpretations we want the work to say instead. We can't always know for certain, but some things can be eliminated. As here. And don't even get me started on that missing comma in "Stopping By Woods."
Lots of interesting comments.
The only divergence I occasionally wonder about is my choice in colleges. I was accepted at both Regis and UW-Madison. I went to Madison. I now live in Denver, not that far from Regis. Would my life have ended up here if I had gone to Regis?
There are lots of other ones, but that's the only one has interested me over the years. More interesting are the forks that are still ahead.
On the many worlds concept: No one actually believes it. It is incredibly easy to prove: Commit quantum suicide (basically, you're the cat in the box). If many worlds is true, you can do it over and over again as many times as you'd like and you'll never die. Of course, each time you do die from the perspective of everyone around you (in the "cat's dead" world); you just don't experience that fork, being dead. So, it's a rather mean thing to do to your friends. Note that these days it could even be automated since we have quantum computers on the internet and the program is just one Hadamard gate.
---ADDED: I have a post from 2007 called "The Road Not Taken." It's about a day I spent as a docent in a Frank Lloyd Wright gatehouse that has the inscription over the fireplace:
That post has 11 comments, three of them yours. There's only one by rhhardin. This post today had 120 comments when I just went to make this comment.
The Ultimate Fork In The Road
Tadzio, Tadzio.
I've forgotten the term for a railroad car taking both routes over a switch, one end one way and the other end the other way. It ends in derailment.
Once upon a time, I was on a path whose best result would be to survive with a manageable number of regrets but the most likely were bad verging onto horrid.
The door was slammed shut. That was fifty years ago. I wonder.
I have done so many things in my life that should have resulted in my death, that by the 95% confidence interval of the multinational distribution it is improbable that I live today. This implies a multiple universe where my current consciousness defaults to the single instance in which I survive. Estimates of my existence resolve into temporary unitary nodes which can be understood statistically and also deterministically via analysis of limit based and Weierstrass methodologies, limited only by the threefold Cantor set. A Decision based conclusion of whether I live or not is premature, if we consider current Bayesian Monte Carlo Metropolols Techniques. Understanding is visualized only via a review by properly diverse individuals free of the bias inherent of white people.
Josephbleau had me until he mentioned white people.
Narr
The rest makes perfect sense.
A friend told me about missing a military transport flight from Europe back to the US that crashed over Greenland, killing all aboard. He told me not to worry about getting to the airport late, ever. How's that for a life-changing event?
I was driving down a dark, foggy road when a car hurtled across my path, just a few yards ahead of me. They were speeding something awful, and a second or two difference would have been the end of me.
The near occasions of death are not necessarily life changing, but they at least enable life to continue, which is open to more possibilities than mouldering in a grave. Churchill said there was nothing so exhilarating as being shot at, and missed.
My wife and I were on the train behind the one that derailed in the Italian Alps in the spring of 1978, killing quite a few. They had to get us all on to buses and around the closure, which they did with Italian efficiency--actually they did pretty well as I recall. We were only a few hours late and weren't on a tight schedule anyway.
Once I was waiting at a red light on a hot summer day, my windows down, and when the light changed the truck on my left sped off, sending a crushed (not aluminum) coke can whirling off and through my window-- I saw something flash across my eyes from left to right and hit the far side of the car. I wish I had saved it. It missed my face by inches and could have taken out an eye.
I've had a few like moments of brief hazard, enough to remind me that I'm here only by dumb luck.
Narr
Really really dumb sometimes
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